the Colonization Society was Gerrit Smith. The son of a slave owner in
the State of New York, he was acquainted with slavery in the milder
form in which it existed in the North. It was just two years before
his birth that the legislature of New York passed its act of
emancipation providing that all children after the year 1799 should be
free, the males on reaching the age of twenty-eight years and the
female twenty-five. His father, Peter Smith, was a slaveholder and the
owner of extensive lands in the counties of northern New York; and
even before his death the management of these vast properties devolved
upon his son.

He soon became deeply interested in the uplift of the slaves and
endeavored to improve their condition by gradual emancipation looking
forward to colonization. As early as 1834, his diary shows a growing
belief in the universal right to liberty. Years ripened this belief
and also developed his anti-land-monopolist principles, both of which
reached fruition in his act of 1846, by which he gave away thousands
of acres of land. He severed his connection with the Colonization
Society when that body overtly declared that it was not a society for
the abolition of slavery nor for the improvement of the blacks nor for
the suppression of the slave trade, and he threw his energy into the
work of abolition as fervently, if not as drastically, as
Garrison.[499]

Anti-land-monopolist as he was, Gerrit Smith believed that the life of
the small free farmer was calculated to develop thrift and self
respect in the character of the colored freedmen that he saw crowded
in sections of the large cities. For although enjoying greater
security of personal liberty, the mass of colored people in New York
State had not made much economic progress, even to the extent of
possessing property valued at two hundred and fifty dollars, which in
that State would have entitled them to the right to vote.[500] He said
that he had for years indulged the thought that when he had sold
enough land to pay his debts, he would give away the remainder to the
poor. He was an Agrarian, who wanted every man desirous to own a farm
to have one. He, therefore, felt that it was safe to make a beginning
in the work of distributing land to individuals. He had theretofore
given tracts of land to public institutions and a few small parcels to
individuals, but had not entered upon the larger task of making large
donations of land to the poor.

He then pla